It’s 2001, and I’m changing drawers with another employee, joking grimly about yet another recent Catholic Church scandal, when “Sex Machine” comes on the overhead speakers. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, I don’t know if this is still a thing, but playing “Sex Machine” pretty much anywhere was a good way to get people to not want to say or do a damn thing but dance, or at the very least vibrate for a minute. And by the power of James Brown, my coworker and pretty much stop talking during the first minute of the song, just vibing, smiling, whatnot.
- oh for the purposes of this tale you need to know that I am literally the only black person working at this particular record store at this particular time, either on the floor or in the back, luckily this isn’t one of those stories, just a detail, anyway -
Then this little white man (I’m black, my coworker is white, we’re both six-feet tall) like about five-four, five-six with light brown hair and a mustache, comes up to us and asks:
“Excuse me, what is this music?”
My coworker and I look at each other, look back at this person, and say, simultaneously, “James Brown.”
“Where would I find this music?” he asks.
Again, almost like a film, we look at each other, and then back at this person, and say, again simultaneously, “R and B.”
“Where is that?” the little man asks?
I’m the drawer that’s leaving, so I say, “I’ll show you, follow me.” and I proceed to lead him downstairs from where we are, through the rows and rows of CDs to the room where pretty much all the Black Music was kept, and up the aisle to the R&B section. We stop and I give him a kind of minor tour of the greats: “Okay, here’s the James Brown you were asking about, and if you’re into that there’s also some Al Green, here’s Aretha Franklin, here’s some Marvin Gaye, if you want something more contemporary we’ve got some Aaliyah here, some Toni Braxton here, some Sade over here…uh, if you’re interested in listening to anything beforehand, go ahead and take any CDs you want to check out to that desk and they’ll set you up at our listening station, you can try before you buy. Cool?”
He doesn’t look overwhelmed, he just says, “Yes, thank you.” and stares into the rows of CDs.
I take the drawer into the back office, count it out and put it away, and then go into the back, the warehouse, to wash up before I leave for lunch.
Another co-worker, uninvolved from the previous incident, comes up to me with a folded piece of scrap paper: “____ said to give you this.” he says, and walks back onto the floor.
I open it up and the note says:
“Excuse me, was the name of that artist Steve Brown?”
“No, it was James, James Brown.”
The intrasystem handset is in my hand without me thinking of it, I dial the extension where ____ is, and I say: “Excuse me, was this motherfucker born on the sun? How do you live on Earth and not know who the fuck James fucking Brown is? There are people who don’t have radios who know who James Brown is! Was this man raised in a bunker? Holy shit!”
____ laughs, and says, “Well, at least he knows now.”
“Yeah, true, but that’s…that’s just very fucking weird to me. But he does know now, so…cool? I guess?”
“I’m not disagreeing, but yeah, it’s a little odd.”
“Well, man, I’m definitely getting snooted during lunch now, my head is fucking done in from that.”
“Righteous! Have a good lunch.”
And then, in the tradition of record store employees everywhere, I took my lunch to the park nearby, ate my lunch, and got as stoned as I possibly could before going back inside.
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
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snowghoul
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